OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I've been running our end of season tournaments this week and last. It finished with the handicap doubles tomorrow night. So far I have 10 pairs in the competition. I have four tables, two medals, and just over four hours. What do you think would make for the best format?

Ideas:

- 2 x 5 team all play all (two tables per group, non-playing pair refs the two games), top two in each group into semis and a final
- 2 x 3 team all play all, 1 x 4 team all play all, top 3 and best loser into semis and a final
- 10 team all play all

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Yasaka Sweden Classic | 802 OX | C8 OX
Check out my blog - LordCope's Latest Learning Log - 10+ years of accumulate mistakes!

Hi LC. Sounds to me like you have may enough time and resources for all 10 to play each other, if you make it best of 3. Most best of 3 doubles matches will take 10 minutes on average. On 4 tables, 8 teams play one another at a time. And you get 4 players free to ref. Each team will play 9 matches, which is 90 matches in all, divided by 4 tables. So you can get 6 matches per hour per table, making 24 matches per hour. that gives you 96 matches in 4 hours, which means you can have 2 semi-final matches and a final. If you want to do best of 5's, then obviously this won't work. You may be able to make the finals best of 5's perhaps. As there's a lot of matches to go through, best of 3's in the main draw can actually leave the players feeling like they've had enough TT anyway. And this way it means there is the greatest variety of teams to play for each team, and hands no-one an disadvantage/advantage of missing playing teams they "could have beaten/could have been beaten by" but didn't get the chance to play them.

The added advantage of keeping it to best of 3 matches, is the timing is more predictable and controllable. Most sets take around 4-5 minutes. If you do best of 5, some matches will go 3-0 and others go 3-2. But if you have a freaky night you could have a majority go 3-2 and then no matter how you cut the groups, you go overtime cos a 5 setter might take 25-30 minutes. If you keep it to best of 3's the worst you get is maybe a 15 minute match...so the overrun's are likely to be smaller.

Obviously with this you'd run it like a weekly league with a ladder just compressed to one night. So the top 4 would play semi's and then winners play final.

Anyway, I hope this helps you decide whichever way you go.

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I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
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I was tending towards an all-play-all too, for the reasons you mention, however, my biggest concern with this is that people might lose sight of the current status, and if one or two teams open up a big lead, the lower-placed teams might find themselves feeling like they're playing for no prize. On the other hand, every team gets 9 matches... if I did a 2 x 5, they'd get 4, if they were one of the weaker teams.

Also, I think there could be strong competition for 4th place, and if I had a semi and a final, then there would be more to play for. I think it might work!

The way I ran the handicap singles on Monday was to play 1 set up to 42, change ends at 21, with handicap applied when one player reaches 21. I think on average the games took 10-12 minutes, so that should still work out for timing.

_________________
Yasaka Sweden Classic | 802 OX | C8 OX
Check out my blog - LordCope's Latest Learning Log - 10+ years of accumulate mistakes!

If you could manage to keep a continual ladder posted everyone would know where they stood. It'd be a tight schedule, so everyone would need to know their role, cos they'd be either playing or reffing. No time for smoke breaks

_________________
I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
Aussie Table Tennis Shop / Aussie Table Tennis Facebook Page / Equipment Review Index / Read my Reb Report Blog: click here.